Art: Forgotten Pyramid

Historyand Hollywood film biographiesare full of painters who
scrabbled for a living in obscure garrets, and became famous only when
dead. But history and Hollywood pass over the many painters admired by
all the world who later disappeared because their art lacked lasting
power or because a generation lost interest in it.

Last week U.S. readers could learn of one such artist, famed, then
forgotten as a personality, and now rediscovered. The 20th Century had
a new name for him: though Henry Fuseli antedated the term he was
England's first and best Surrealist. When he died in 1825, Sir Thomas
Lawrence mourned...